Baby Vanellope Hope’s birth day was supposed to be Christmas Eve. But an incredibly rare condition which had her heart growing on the outside of her body meant she needed to be brought into the world early. On Wednesday 22 November a team of around 50 clinical staff at the world famous Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, worked together to bring her into the world safely and give her a fighting start in life. [more...]

Altruistic people are said to be "kind hearted" - and new research published in the journal Scientific Reports shows that generous people really are more in touch with their own hearts. The study, carried out at Anglia Ruskin University and Stockholm University, is the first to find a possible physiological reason why some people are more charitable than others. [more...]

A new tool to identify potentially fatal aneurysms in patients with headaches who seem otherwise well will help emergency departments to identify high-risk patients, improve survival rates and cut out unnecessary imaging, according to new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). [more...]

"Within a pluralistic account of morality, partial values have a merit of their own and should be assessed in their own terms. These values are extremely relevant in the field of organ transplantation, but are misunderstood at a political level where partiality is put at par with injustice, and where fairness is exclusively taken as impartial justice." Dr. Medard Hilhorst (Erasmus Medical University Rotterdam) argues "that partial values are fundamental for social life and that directed donor preferences should be incorporated and facilitated in a new system of fair organ allocation. The justification for a prohibition of directed wishes is mistaken, whereas arguments to lift the prohibition are ethically convincing." [more...]

Transplantation: China is the only country in the world systematically using organs from prisoners for transplantation, Professor Huige Li reports. For over 40 years, executed prisoners were used as the main organ source in China. It´s a profitable international business. A number of Chinese Hospitals claimed that they could provide liver transplants in the time range between 3 to 30 days. [more...]

Outdoor air pollution has long been linked to major health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A new study now adds kidney disease to the list, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System. [more...]

Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz, Germany, have made a breakthrough in understanding the origin of the ageing process. They have identified that genes belonging to a process called autophagy – one of the cells most critical survival processes – promote health and fitness in young worms but drive the process of ageing later in life. [more...]

The opioid crisis in the United States is resulting in increased admissions to hospital intensive care units and in increased numbers of ICU deaths from opioid overdoses, according to new research published online, ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. [more...]